Chapter 43 - The Phantom Injunction
Within twenty minutes, our private security team had secured the perimeter of the coastal cottage. Fire suppression foam coated the nursery, and two tactical SUVs were idling in the driveway, their high beams cutting through the salt spray and lingering smoke.
I stood in the study with Marcus’s old black leather ledger clutched in my hand, staring at the encrypted tablet on the desk. The financial devastation was already unfolding. Victoria’s lawyers had filed an emergency claim through an offshore tribunal in Saint Helier, invoking the ninety-year-old covenant signed by my grandfather and hers. Because Harrington Industries had absorbed several overseas shipping lanes back in the late nineties, the maritime clauses had survived every corporate restructuring.
"They've locked the accounts in London, Zurich, and Singapore," Carter, my head of corporate security, reported as he entered the room, his jacket damp from the coastal rain. "The banks won't touch the funds until an international magistrate reviews the bloodline dispute. You're effectively cut off from liquid capital, Brian."
"She thinks she can starve me out," I muttered, my jaw clenching so hard my teeth ached. "She wants me crawling back to negotiate on her terms, offering Leo's inheritance as restitution for what my father did."
"There's more," Emily said, walking into the study. She had changed into dark travel clothes, Leo strapped securely to her chest in a front carrier, fast asleep against her heartbeat. She held up an encrypted burner phone that was buzzing continuously. "A secure relay from the state correctional facility in Concord. Someone paid a guard twenty thousand dollars to place this call."
I took the phone, tapping the speaker button. "Speak."
A rough, exhausted voice came through the line, accompanied by the background clatter of a prison cafeteria. "Brian? Don't hang up. God, please don't hang up."
It was Jason.
My brother sounded completely broken. The sneering, arrogant golden boy who had laughed at me across the Thanksgiving table, mocking my humble apartment and calling me the family's biggest disappointment, was entirely vanished. In his place was a terrified inmate fighting for survival.
"You have ten seconds, Jason," I said coldly.
"Victoria visited me this morning before she went to your cottage," Jason gasped out, his words tumbling over each other in sheer panic. "She told me she was going to burn everything down. She said Marcus didn't keep the original covenant in his office. He kept it in a blind trust vault beneath the old harbor customs house in Boston—under my name. She forced me to sign over power of attorney three months ago, Brian! She played me from the very start!"
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"Why are you telling me this?" I demanded.
"Because she's not going to let me live to testify!" Jason sobbed, his composure shattering entirely. "She told me that once the transfer clears at midnight tomorrow, I'll have an 'accident' in the recreation yard. Brian, I know I was a bastard to you. I know I hated you because Dad always respected your independence while he treated me like a trained dog. But please... she’s going to kill me!"
